


Seven Times A Seer

by antumbral



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Merlin (BBC)
Genre: 7500-10000 words, Blind Character, Character Study, Fantasy, Gen, Magic, Precognition, Swords, Time Skips, Tough Chicks, characters with disabilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-19
Updated: 2009-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 09:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antumbral/pseuds/antumbral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven times Morgana saw the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Times A Seer

i. from the frozen earth

Bells toll the hour outside, but from within the stone walls of the upper castle tower, the household nurse can't hear them. Her charge is much closer and is sobbing noisily, snot streaming down her chin, black hair wild as thistles and smock pulled askew.

Morgana always cries, and this time is no different. She wails and throws herself down on the floors, pulls her hair into her eyes, and the nurse waits out her tantrums like the summer storms until she's quiet enough for someone to right her dress and wipe the blood off knees skint on the stone. It's routine by now, the tears and then the uncanny calm that follows after. Morgana always goes quiet, too, after she's cried a bit, quiet and still and large eyed. But she's biddable enough, and follows when the nurse takes her hand to lead her to the Great Hall.

A thin cloud of dust weighs in the air, product of a spring with too few rains, stirred by the restless shifting of the waiting court. When His Lordship arrives, a fine figure in mail and sword on the stone dais, she looks down and Morgana is cheering with the rest, small hands clenched into the folds of her nurse's skirts. There are speeches and calls to valor for the men who will go and fight, then the court swarms outside to where the horses are already saddled and waiting.

His Lordship gives Morgana a hug before he swings onto his horse, and the child stands dwarfed at the animal's feet looking up at him. "Goodbye," she says, perfectly composed. His Lordship waves down at her, then wheels to lead the men out of the keep.

As soon as he's no longer looking, Morgana races off, running as fast as skirts and small legs will allow. The nurse doesn't even try to follow or keep up, because this too is tradition. Before the war party has assembled itself enough to head for the road proper, Morgana's curls bob into view above the gate of the keep, staring down over the wall as they leave.

"Goodbye," she shouts again, high and clear. A trick of the stone amplifies her voice, so that she sounds louder than a child should, and distorted. Even standing behind her, even from below in the courtyard as Morgana faces out toward the road, the nurse can hear.

Two days later, while the whole town suffers still in the grips of the heat wave that accompanied early summer, the nurse takes her charge outside the walls and down to the river, to take advantage of the wind across the water and the way the spray settles the dust from the air. In the late afternoon, when they are both soft edged and drowsy, dozing, Morgana lifts her head and wanders down to the river's edge. She thrusts in her fingers and watches the water stream into runnels, then steps into the river completely, still fully dressed and soaking her smock.

The nurse shouts in alarm, but Morgana ignores her and wades out toward the shallow center, stilling with her face pointed towards the sky. The water breaks around her like a rock, fixed in the midst of its motion, leaving a wake behind her. After a few minutes, when it becomes obvious that she won't go out any further, the nurse stops shouting. After a few more minutes, Morgana lowers her head and wades back.

When she gets to shore, shivering from the water, the nurse wraps her in a blanket and flutters about her like an agitated butterfly, but something has settled in Morgana and as they walk back to the keep the nurse notices. When they reach the Great Hall, the change becomes clear: servants and tapestries and stone all seem to flow around her, Morgana steadfast against them as if leaning into their current. It is an illusion, of course, but an illusion that the nurse cannot shake off, and for the remainder of the week -- until the messengers come with news of His Lordship's demise -- she watches the keep and its people and the passage of time break against her young charge like water on the river rocks and pass around, and almost fancies that she still can see the wake.

*

ii. live where the lightning fries

Flash of light out of the corner of his eye, and Arthur turns toward the movement. He isn't even halfway around when he hears the unmistakable barking exhale of a man who's been hit in the throat, and by the time he's facing the battle Caradoc is on the ground, Morgana standing over him and twirling her sword in triumph.

"Felled by a girl. Again." Arthur raises an eyebrow at the lump that is Caradoc, who is prevented from responding by the need to breathe.

"Think you're better?" Morgana's dagger-edge grin is barely winded, deceptively innocuous. She pushes her hair back off her face, and Arthur knows what Caradoc saw in the hazy light of early morning when he drew her as a sparring partner: china-delicate cheekbones and wrists too small to manage a normal-sized sword with proper balance.

Arthur also knows how dangerous she can be.

He hefts his own sword and they square off across from each other, circling cautiously. Arthur strikes first, because Arthur always strikes first. They've fought since they were children -- swords and fists and other, subtler battles -- and some things are second nature.

He tries her high, using the full force of his superior weight and muscle mass to sweep downward. The blow might have shattered her grip had it landed, just as a similar blow had felled Gareth earlier, but Morgana is wily and lets his sword sweep easily by, slipping in and lunging close -- so close -- to his unguarded side. Arthur whirls, recenters his footing, and Morgana uses his distraction to press her advantage.

Parries land furiously, as Arthur refuses to be backed up and Morgana tests his defenses and speed. She fights like a whirlwind, snap of metal and gone again, more motion than any of the knights manage, always one step ahead. Arthur launches his own offensive and she snarls at him. The pressure of her feet as she spins away rips the grass beneath, leaving divots in the wake of the fight.

A low lunge, which Arthur blocks handily, leaves him with an opening. She's over-extended and only barely manages to roll away in time. Most people would have fallen there, but Morgana has a fine sense of exactly where his sword will be at any given moment -- always has, perhaps the best instinct for the flow of battle that Arthur's ever known -- and so she evades again.

When they're both panting and beginning to slow, sweat chafing under Arthur's mail and plastering thin strands of hair wild across Morgana's face, Arthur takes the only other advantage he knows. He blocks two blows, one glancing against his shoulder and the other shockingly close to his ear. While Morgana's rebalancing, he sweeps the flat of his blade toward her knee and she parries him in a scream of iron on iron. As quickly as his weary arms can manage, he repeats the movement, sweep toward her knee and it leaves him open, leaves him off-balance but the blow connects before she can take advantage and she falls, Arthur's sword coming to a rest at the hollow of her throat.

Morgana pants up at him from her place on the ground, dirt smudged across her chin and mouth, hair sticking to her cheeks, eyes animal-wild and furious for a second before she blinks and is only Morgana again, stubborn and too proud for her own good, thrusting her sword into the earth to lever herself up and ignoring the hand Arthur offers to help.

None of the knights can beat her, and Arthur wins only because he's fought her often enough to know that the way through her defenses is to repeat attacks: strike once and she'll parry, and then strike again in the exact same way. The second time always seems to surprise her.

*

iii. the spaces with the dark

The water of the lake around the Blessed Isle is a mire of tangled, decaying reeds and skeletal branches, ghostly and submerged. The fog rolled in miles ago, and damps the air around them, soaking through Merlin's shirt and beading tiny droplets that fall from his lashes into his eyes. Around them, the hills tower purple and barely visible, channeling the wind so that it swirls the mist in confusing patterns, never clearing away the fog but rearranging it.

The last time he was here he was barely more than a boy, but Merlin remembers the way.

Unnerved, his horse shifts beneath him, clamoring the buckles of its harness. The cart behind them once hauled smith's mallets for the encampment before the battle, but now it serves as litter for the king, Arthur's breath shallow and gasping but constant enough. Merlin had worried that there wasn't time, that the trip would take too long or his wound would prove too mortal, but they are arrived and Arthur still lives, so Merlin presses his lips together and allows himself a modicum of hope.

A figure takes shape out of the gloom, and the sounds of the lake alter subtly: lap of water against wooden planking, screech of tree branches against the bottom of the boat. The last time he was here there was a lamp on the prow of the craft, but this time if it's still there it isn't lit. Instead the boat is guided by the figure that stands at the back of it, a woman in a heavy dark cloak, the hood shielding her face. Through the fog, she might well be a wraith.

"Help me," Merlin says when her boat reaches the dock, and she steps out carefully, moving slowly with one hand outstretched. Something about the tilt of her head, the way she follows him to the cart only after she can hear him move, her motions a little too considered, sets off alarms in his mind.

"Here," and he guides her hands to Arthur's legs. Together they lift him, ignoring the small pain noises, and carry the king to the bottom of the boat.

She's brought blankets in readiness. Merlin doesn't know why he's surprised.

Her movements are surer once in the boat, familiar territory, and she settles by the tiller to guide them back across the water. Merlin crouches beside Arthur, one hand gentle on the swell of his chest, near the wound but not touching it. "How long?" Merlin asks when they are well out into the lake, small bubble of humanity amidst the fog. "How long have you been like this? Is this why you didn't come back to us, Morgana?"

"A while," she says, "and yes, in part." Her voice is exactly as he remembered, proud and ever-so-faintly foreign in her inflections. "Arthur would have pitied me."

"You knew, though, didn't you? You knew you'd go blind even before you left. You didn't tell us anything."

 

"No," but Merlin isn't sure what she's denying. The ruined castle on the island fades slowly into view, and it occurs to Merlin only now to wonder how she navigates so surely on open water, when he himself would likely have lost them in the fog.

"And you did nothing," he says, no apologies for the bitterness of his tone. "He's dying now, and you couldn't come tell us what would happen? Don't you think it's a little despicable to hold grudges all these years?"

"I see what will be," Morgana says softly, and her sigh might only be the wind but for the way her hand tightens on the edge of the boat. "What _will_ be, Merlin, not what might be. I had no place in his life, there was nothing of me in the events that brought him here, so I did not tell you. Wasn't going to tell you. Never told, won't tell, couldn't--," her voice trails off into silence. "You were always the one who saw possibilities, Merlin. I only see the future."

She's quiet, but in her silence Merlin can hear anger, the trace of the girl he remembers running down the steps of Camelot in terror for Arthur's life, a lifetime ago. She'd failed to convince him to stay out of danger then, when Arthur fought the griffin, and Merlin begins to understand what she means about only seeing the future and not the possibilities. Still, Arthur's heart beats sluggish and thick beside him and there is no suppressing the resentment that she didn't even try to warn them this time.

They are silent for the rest of the trip.

The boat runs aground on the Blessed Isle with a slick crunch of lake-bottom mud, and again it takes both of them to haul Arthur onto land and into the interior of the ruin. Morgana seems very sure here, purposeful and confident. Queen of her own little domain; high priestess. Merlin follows her lead, and together they raise Arthur up to rest on the ancient stone altar.

The wound is bleeding sluggishly again, and Merlin presses down to staunch the flow. Arthur gives a high, animal noise of pain but doesn't otherwise seem conscious, and Merlin isn't sure whether that's a blessing. Arthur is intolerable when he's awake -- he's never handled pain well, and age hasn't diminished the arrogance that insists Merlin's every waking moment center on _him_ \-- but when he's unconscious like this Merlin worries, and begins to want to hear Arthur order him around again.

"Stay by him," Morgana says, and Merlin looks up at her, surprised. "You should both sleep. It's alright. There's time." If anyone would know, it would be Morgana, so Merlin cautiously lays down beside Arthur, keeping his hand on the wound, and watches through exhausted, slitted eyes as Morgana settles to sit on the other side of the courtyard from the altar. She pushes her hood back and he realizes for the first time that her hair has gone mostly white, only remnants of its former dark glory left. The years have been hard on them all. "It has been good to see you again," she says, and there is no irony in the words.

He traveled days without sleep in hopes of getting Arthur here before it was too late, and now that Arthur's breathing seems more peaceful than it has in far too long, Merlin finds himself relaxing.

Morgana reaches a hand out towards them from her seat on the ground, almost casual.

_"Hic iacet Arthurus quoqum iacet Merlinus, rex quondum rexque futurus, lux lucis preteritus lux lucis futurus, pollicit ad Albion,"_ she murmurs, and Merlin sees her throw her head back toward the sky just before ozone lifts the hair along his arms and a flash of white light explodes around her, obliterating her silhouette -- another high priestess calling spells, another woman gone in lightning. There is no time for him to feel horror, or pity, though both feelings might come if he had more than a moment for shock. But for one beat then another, Arthur's heart is strong and young and steady beside him, and Merlin closes his eyes and falls asleep, pulled under against his will by a force that feels a lot like magic and entirely like destiny.

*

iv. until the light is gone

Merlin finds her in the stables wearing a traveling cloak, away from the laughter and lights of the wedding feast. "What are you doing?" he asks.

"I'm leaving," she says in an exhausted voice, hoisting a pack onto her mare.

"Wait, now? You can't go, just like that. What will Gwen think?" Gwen will break down, curl into herself and emerge after weeks a shadow of the queen she once promised to be. Merlin knows it in his bones, because he knows Gwen all too well. He's never been the one for premonitions.

Morgana's hands are steady, adjusting straps on her saddle. Merlin should help her; she's unused to preparing her own mounts and she hasn't tightened the girth enough, but he folds his arms and leans back against the rough hewn stable wall instead.

"Gwen has Arthur," she says at last, "And she's happy now."

"She won't be if you leave. You'll break her heart."

"And what would you have me do, Merlin?" Morgana rounds on him, but there's none of the anger he was expecting. In a way, her resignation is more terrifying than her temper could ever be. Merlin doesn't know this joyless, defeated woman. "How would you have me stay? Do you think I could show my face now, to the court? I'm a laughingstock, Merlin. The fine lady upstaged by the chambermaid, the woman Arthur rejected for a servant."

A bitter smile, and Morgana has never seemed less beautiful than when lines of acceptance write themselves around her mouth. "There are whispers already when they think I can't hear. I can't even marry away, because no one would have the woman Arthur passed over for the household staff. I'll be a threat to Gwen's power as queen because I once was her mistress, and a shame to Arthur in front of other kings because I'm a reminder that his wife wasn't always nobility. Better that I leave now," and she draws herself up with a flash of the old fire, pride along her backbone like stout mail. "I have no future here."

Merlin stares at her, and after a moment of his silence Morgana turns back to the horse. Her traveling cloak is stained along the hem, where the mare has trodden on it. "You weren't even going to tell us," Merlin says at last, and he can see in the cant of her head that they have both noticed he doesn't argue with her reasons for going.

Her shoulders slump. "It was already going to be difficult. I just wanted to be away. It seemed easiest like this."

Arthur has been reckless with her, Merlin thinks, but out loud he says, "Where will you go?"

She shrugs and tries again at the girth, but isn't strong enough. Merlin's limbs feel stiff and heavy, like he has spent too long in the stocks, but he rouses himself and crosses to her side, pressing her hands lightly out of the way and pulling the strap up himself, his greater weight lending the advantage of leverage. The mare shifts at the tightening around her middle and blows out loudly, shaking her mane. Morgana watches his hands as he fastens the buckle, then his face as he knots the excess strap under the saddle. He ignores her. "The druids," she says finally. "They have no hatred for magic. I can learn." Merlin takes the pack from her without comment and ties the knots to lash it behind the saddle.

For a time they both are quiet, staring at the readied horse as the mare paces restlessly around the confines of the stall.

"I don't know if I'll return," Morgana says at last, looking down, when she has stepped forward and taken Merlin's hand to swing up. "Please don't tell Arthur."

"I promise," Merlin says, but the words come out low and strangled past the tightening in his lungs. He clears his throat. "I promise," he repeats, and manages to sound almost normal.

He leads her horse out to the gate. There are only sporadic guards on tonight, and easy to avoid. Most of the knights and footmen are at the wedding, and those that aren't are complacent with wine and good food. No magic is needed to make sure they are not seen.

When he releases the mare's bridle as they pass beneath the arch to the western road, Morgana's chin trembles. They both look out into the murky night, faint sounds of the bards and of laughter at their backs. The countryside seems even darker and more cold from the no-man's-land between the light and the gloom. Morgana bites her lip and squares her shoulders.

"Thank you," she says. "And tell Arthur that I will be well, that it truly is better this way."

Merlin doesn't respond, because he doesn't agree with her, but he knows that when she gets that particular shade of determined in her eye, there is no dissuading her.

"Be well," she says, and throws off the last longings to linger, kicking the mare into a trot out onto the road. Merlin watches until he cannot see her anymore, red cloak swallowed entirely by the night. Then he turns and goes back into the golden hall, to take his place beside Arthur and listen to the bards tell of how Arthur and his knights fought the griffin and how valiant they had been.

Long before the feast is over, Arthur claps him on the shoulder and slips out with Gwen following, radiant. Merlin smiles at them both, flashes encouraging eyebrows at Gwen, and wonders how long this fragile happiness can possibly last, even if he uses all his power to stretch it out.

*

v. coppers to a begger's bowl

It's been over a decade since she entered Morgana's service as a child, and by now Gwen knows the routine. Morgana wakes in a series of small noises: muffled snorts into the pillow as she buries her face to escape the light, piteous whimpers if Gwen tries to tug her out of bed too soon, contented little grunts and sighs as her hair is brushed and braided into some semblance of array. They joke that Morgana never rises with the sun; she rises twice as slowly and whinges about it the whole way.

Today Gwen throws open the heavy curtains, tugging at the weight of the velvet as it puddles in her arms. The curtain tie has broken again (Gwen suspects the household cats, which roam where they will and shape mischief with no human watching to keep them civil), so she simply knots the curtain itself to hold it back from the window.

It's a lovely day, the merchants already out and setting up in the square below, the kitchen boys rounding up the hogs that will be tonight's dinner. The sky is balmy and clear, so Gwen leaves the window wide open to let in the breeze.

She crosses to the side of Morgana's enormous bed and seats herself on the edge, smoothing down the wrinkles in her skirt before allowing her hand to wander over to the pillow. Presently, Morgana is a mound of dark hair barely visible from under the sheets and Gwen tangles her fingers in the fine ends, so very different from her own hair. Morgana's hair is gorgeous, and Gwen has been playfully jealous ever since they were old enough to start braiding ribbons through the curls for Morgana to give to tournament champions. More often than not the tournament champion is Arthur, in which case Gwen steals upstairs during the feast afterward and pilfers them from his wardrobe for Morgana to use again the next time. Arthur has no use for ribbons anyway, though Gwen likes the secret way he always smiles at her when he reaches up to tug one out of Morgana's hair and undoes in an instant all of Gwen's careful handiwork. At the last tournament, he'd followed her upstairs when she left to retrieve the ribbon from his rooms, and startled her while she was sorting through his wardrobe.

"Looking for this?" he'd asked, lounging casually in the doorway, the ribbon outstretched in his hand. Something about the way his eyes followed her drew a blush to her cheeks as she stepped over to take it from him, and something has been different ever since, though Gwen isn't sure what. Perhaps he's just embarrassed that he caught her pawing through his clothes.

Gwen reaches further down, scratching at Morgana's scalp until she hears the drowsily contented sound that means Morgana is awake, if not entirely conscious yet. Content that she's succeeded in rousing Morgana at least a little, Gwen rises and putters around the room, straightens the mess on the vanity table and hides Morgana's sword from Uther's prying, opens the door and brings the breakfast tray inside. The smell of food is usually the next step in coaxing Morgana out of bed.

The old porter has left a bundle of delicate white foxglove with the tray, so Gwen brings those inside too and picks at the rough twine that binds them. She isn't the only one in the castle that loves Morgana dearly. There is a vase on the windowsill, so she steps to put the flowers in it when a pale hand emerges from beneath the sheets.

"Nuh-unh," says the lump of Morgana articulately, and Gwen feels a smile helpless across her face.

She's moving to put the flowers in the vase then go see what Morgana wants when the covers again say, "Nun-unh," then more lazily, "Don't put them in that one." Gwen shrugs and fills a bowl with water to put the foxgloves on the table instead. They don't look as good in the bowl as they would have in a real vase, but sometimes even Gwen can't figure out Morgana's whims. Best to just give in, in things like this where it doesn't really matter. Arthur claims that she's too indulgent of Morgana, but Gwen thinks he's just envious that he doesn't have a friend who loves him half as well as she loves Morgana. She crosses back to the side of the bed.

"Good morning," she says, warm and sweet as sunlight, but Morgana is already a cocoon beneath the covers again. Gwen watches her, leaning closer, and finds her fingers tangled of their own accord in Morgana's hair. She startles backward, though, and falls to the floor at a sudden explosion of noise behind her: scratching and whirling ending in a crushing smash. Gwen cowers closer to the bed, afraid to know what terrible things could come in a window so high off the ground. When she finally twists around to see, a giant crow has landed on the sill. The whirling was its wings beating down the air, and the crash toward the end was the sound of the vase, knocked off the sill and smashed to the courtyard below. As soon as Gwen moves to regain her feet the bird flies off again in a thunder of oil-black feathers, but the damage is done.

Gwen peers over the edge of the window at the remains of the vase, shattered on the stone so many meters beneath her. The shards of pottery look like sand from so far up, spread in a circle on the stone as though some giant had been making sand-murals. The merchants and drovers in the square are staring back up at her, equally startled by the vase that had come plummeting out of the sky. Gwen waves awkwardly down at them, mortified, then turns back into the room. Her heart still feels like it's galloping inside her chest. Another soft movement catches her eye, and she glances over at the table to see the foxgloves in the bowl, unharmed and swinging gently with the breeze of the bird's flight.

"Did you see that -- " Gwen asks the sheets, but the lump interrupts with a long, shaky inhale: snoring. Morgana is already sleeping.

*

vi. kindling to the red air

"We don't have time to do this properly and I'm sorry for that, but I need to know." Merlin stands at Morgana's door. The midnight bell tolled long ago, and the corridor walls behind him dance with the twisting glimmer of torches. He carries a candle in one hand and wears a night-shift that falls to the knee and doesn't fit well at the shoulders. It was Arthur's, once.

Morgana blinks out at him, a sleepy eye through the crack she opened in the doorframe at his knock. "Merlin," she slurs, and pauses to yawn, "Merlin, what are you on about?"

"Arthur moved the departure for the war party up to tomorrow morning. He's leaving too soon, and I -- I need you, and I don't have much time to explain it."

Morgana sways sleepily towards the door and catches herself before her head hits the wood. He woke her, and he's about to turn her life upside down, but Merlin forces himself to remember the stony resolve of Arthur's face when he decided that he couldn't wait another week if it meant the slaughter of another village, and Merlin steels his will. Morgana is the key, she can tell him what he needs desperately to know, even if he must be cruel to her to hear it.

"Well, I'm sure you're going with him, so you'd best get some sleep," Morgana advises, her own eyes barely open.

Merlin wedges his foot in the open door and leans on it until she has to admit him or be knocked backwards by his greater weight. The shadows of the torches outside show the befuddlement on her face that he would force his way into her room. Merlin lets the light through the opening cut a jagged slash across her face for one moment more while he watches awareness and wariness steal into her expression, then he kicks the door closed behind himself and throws them both into darkness. He can hear her moving, but he doesn't know the room well enough to know where. For his part, he leans back against the door and stays where he is.

"Your dreams," he says, "the ones you've had since you were a child. You're a seer, Morgana. They're true, they always have been."

In the dark, he might as well be speaking to himself, but he hears her intake of breath and presses on. "Those times you've seen Arthur wounded or dying: they're real. They're all real. You see the future when you sleep, Morgana, and I would have told you this more gently but with Arthur riding out tomorrow I've run out of time."

"Why?" she asks, and though he still can't see where she is, there's enough quaver in the word to let him know that she takes him seriously. Merlin has long wondered whether Morgana ever suspected, in her deep heart, that her visions weren't normal. "How do you know -- you can't know that."

His eyes have acclimated somewhat to the gloom, and he can see her silhouette perched on the edge of the bed. Moving slowly, hand outstretched to avoid furniture, he navigates his way across the room and sits beside her. "Gaius figured it out first," he says. "He's thought ever since you became the king's ward that there was something more than nightmares to your dreams. You seemed to see more than you should -- the griffin, Sophia. It wasn't that hard to figure out."

"Oh," she says, and the word is so faint and small that Merlin worries she is holding her breath or crying or -- or, or _terrified_, he finally realizes, and understands his mistake.

"Morgana, listen to me. Look at me." After giving her a moment to hopefully obey, he conjures a flame, floating in the air above his hand. The flicker of light casts stark shadows on her face, makes her look ancient and alien. She reaches out as if to touch the ball of fire, then drops her hand back to her side. "I didn't come to scare you," he says, and maybe he should have said it from the beginning but it's water under the bridge now. "You know enough that you could threaten me, if you wanted to. Uther would believe you above me. But that doesn't matter, I just need you to tell me what you've seen for Arthur in this war. I can help him, Morgana, I can save him, but I need to know enough to be prepared." As an afterthought he snuffs the flame; it's easier to talk in darkness.

Morgana is quiet for a long, long time, so much so that Merlin begins to look around the room and watch idly for the dark shapes of night birds through the window outside. He jumps when she speaks again, but her tone is reflective. "They've always been true."

"Morgana, tell me about Arthur."

A swish of fabric, though he can't see where she moved. "They've always been true -- this isn't natural, Merlin. What sort of horrible thing am I, all those dreams -- ." She drifts off, and Merlin wonders what she has seen in visions to inspire such horror. It's all he can do to grit his teeth and not shake her to tell him about Arthur.

"Morgana, please. I'm sorry that I can't stay here and help you think more about this, but we have no time." Merlin makes his voice as forceful as he can. "We leave in a few hours, and I need to get supplies together. So think about all of this later, and I promise we'll talk when I get back, but if you've dreamed of Arthur, please. Please. Morgana, I need to know that he's going to be okay. Tell me he'll be okay or tell me what to watch for if he won't." There's too much there, he's been incautious in the dark and gone too far, let too much show.

Another long silence, and Merlin squeezes his hands together so tightly it hurts. Finally she takes a deep breath, the kind that lifts her shoulders and leaves her deflated as a waterskin gone dry when she exhales.

"No."

Merlin blinks. "No what?"

"I can't tell you anything."

"You haven't seen anything?"

"I've -- we don't know that I'm seeing everything, I only see pieces. Just fragments, Merlin. I could be wrong, or something I tell you could make you less cautious about the things I haven't seen. Gaius gives me sleeping draughts to keep the dreams away, what if something goes wrong because I didn't dream something and you weren't ready?"

"What if he dies because you did dream something and you refused to tell me?" Merlin explodes at her, and even in the dark can see her cower back. A momentary flash of guilt about frightening her drowns in his overwhelming fear for Arthur.

"No," she whispers again. "No, Merlin, we are not meant to know the future."

Merlin sits on the bed and trembles. Breathes in ragged gasps and tries desperately to keep from lashing out at her, even though his magic wants to force her to tell him. Wants to hurt her the way Arthur may get hurt if Merlin can't shield him well enough.

"If I tell you now, a day might come when you rely on me too much. Most of the time even I don't know what I'm dreaming, Merlin. I would be guessing and what if I guess wrong? You'll come to hate me for this curse."

"Have you seen that?" Merlin asks. "Have you seen a day when you're wrong?"

She doesn't answer, and after a time Merlin realizes she doesn't intend to. He rises from the bed and because he now has nothing to lose, floats several flames in the air to light his way back across the room. She stands as well, pale as sheets in her white nightdress, dark hair a cascade down her back. Her eyes are very blue. She could be the very image of Nimueh.

In the corridor, Merlin closes the door behind himself and wonders if betrayal to Arthur will always look like dark hair and blue eyes.

*

vii. take her from water to sky

"But it could help me?" Morgana says. "If I drink this, it could help me see everything?"

The men around her hesitate, shift uneasily from foot to foot, but in the end one steps forward and reluctantly says, "Yes. It could help. It could also kill you, or you could lose your mind. Your gift is too valuable, Morgana, we can't let you do this."

What he doesn't realize is that he has no say in the matter; she's seen that much. She knows that she will drink the tincture and knows what it will taste like in her mouth, but after that the future gets fuzzy and out of focus, seen only in snatches like the tatters of her old dreams, the ones she'd had before the Druids taught her to harness her foresight even in waking hours.

It's exciting, really. For most of the last year, she has known exactly what will happen to her and those around her. Life itself seemed to be a dreaming, a replay of what her gift had already shown days or weeks in advance. It had been fun at first, when the foresight let her win more easily in combat training and let her brew potions that she ought not to have known. After a while, when the initial wonder faded and Morgana realized that the world held no surprises, life had become a great deal more banal. Now there is a thrill in being so close to a time that is still shrouded to her, a feeling that her fortune is her own for the first time since she began to learn to see in earnest.

"You will let me do it," she tells them matter-of-factly, not an argument, just a statement of fact about how the future will be. "I sit on that bed when I do." She widens the vision to see more than just the interior of the cabin, another thing she has learned since coming here: how to control the scope and focus of the visions. "It's today, mid-afternoon. You're all looking outside --," and even as she says it a crash in the forest whips all heads around to stare out the window and wonder what danger is lurking, all except Morgana who has seen this before and knows the ending too well for curiosity. She crosses to the bed and seats herself, lifting the vial of tincture prepared that morning, "-- and I sit down on the bed so that I won't get hurt when I collapse." Their heads whip back around, seconds too late or maybe a lifetime too late, since this had been inevitable in her future since the first breath she drew.

The liquid feels like drowning and like smoke at the same time. Her hands come up instinctively to clutch her throat, choking, and her eyes widen at the diamonds that scatter across her sight-field, sparks and fireflies and lightning behind her lids until the thickness in her throat spreads darkness across it all. The last thing that Morgana foresees for the next twelve months is the way her hair will hit the blanket when she falls.

...

When she wakes, her first awareness is that her body feels like it's been kept in a box, heavy and painful with the pinpricks of fading numbness. Her next awareness is of the sound of someone shouting: a Druid girl, her sight shows her, who will run outside to fetch the elders with the news that the sleeping seer is awake, will trip on a tree root as she runs, will wed the boy who helps her stand again, will miscarry twice and be killed by a boar on a hunt before her hair even greys. Her gift has never shown her anything as distant, as picture-perfect accurate, as eerie as knowing the entire progression of that girl's lifetime as simply as she knows her own name. Morgana blinks twice, trying to clear her mind. That's when she realizes that her eyes can't see.

She panics, falls out of bed and hits her knees on the floor. She can hear the Druid girl burst back into the room, alarmed, but when one of the men reaches out to help her up she sees his life in the same flash of insight that gave her the girl's: he's a smith, he'll build the weapons for a war the Druids will lose, he'll never learn to adapt to the new rule and will die twisted and bitter but surrounded by family in a peaceful land. It's terrifying, having two other people's thoughts and pasts and futures in her head, so she rips away from his grasp and strikes out at the next person who tries to help her.

Five minutes of confusion later, she manages to make the Druids understand the situation: her gift is stronger than ever and her vision is gone. One of the oldest men -- she can see him in her mind a few seconds before he speaks, and her gift tries to follow his life out, trace the string as it had with the girl and the smith. She refuses to let her mind go, and concentrates hard on the very near future, hearing the conversation in stereo through her sight and through her ears.

They call her an oracle, the strongest seer in generations. Morgana allows them to lead her to a bath -- when she concentrates, she can see the position of obstacles before she encounters them and can navigate despite her blindness -- and changes clothes gratefully. She answers a few of their questions, but keeps most of what she sees to herself, sinks into the delightfully physical sensation of water down her face and soap on her hands and in her hair. Late into the night she listens to them dance, trying not to use the sight, not wanting to know anything but the now. After so many months of stillness, sleep comes slowly, but eventually she makes her way back to her bed and settles on her side, tracing the rough weave of fabric beneath her cheek.

Her dreams swirl into mists of Arthur. Arthur and Gwen happy, wary of each other, miserable. Arthur with Merlin by his side on the battlefield, raining arrows and lightning and vengeance down on his enemies. Arthur in front of the people, adored as no other king in history. Arthur joyful, Arthur thoughtful, Arthur betrayed, always Arthur.

The morning finds chilly sun on her cheeks, damp with tears from the dream. The feeling of the real world is a shock: solid blankets beneath her and dust in the air when she breathes in. When she allows her concentration to waver, her gift returns to the sight of Arthur as an old man, as comfortable in the crown of the High King as he had been in his mail as a child. He's saying something to Merlin, the two of them laughing with their heads together as the rest of the court strains to understand. Arthur looks up, startled, as if he's heard something and his eyes seem through the vision to settle directly on her for a moment before he turns back to Merlin with a softer, secret smile. Morgana rises and feels her way through the room to the table, where breakfast is salty bread and sour cherries. She spills water on herself twice, and both times she knows her hand will tip even before she picks up the cup.

Another day with the Druids, another night. This time it's Merlin, as magnificent in his full power as he was bumbling as a servant. The next night is Gwen, then Lancelot, then Gorlois, then Gawain, then Bors and Elaine and Galahad. Morgana eats only when she must, bathes only when reminded, and spends as many moments as she can in the future where she can see them all again, happy until it falls apart.

After three weeks the Druids give up on asking her to see the future of their encampment or their people. Morgana spends days and nights in the years ahead for Camelot, spinning out its glory and its tragedy again and again and again. Her deepest regret is that she did not learn such control earlier, with time enough to abandon Mordred when it still could have done some good. Regret is a futile emotion, though, for she knows better than anyone that the thread of the future is set long before any event comes to pass, and fate is not so much a clay to be molded by choices as a goddess who laughs at them all for trying. Morgana rages against the inevitable, throwing bowls against the wall and sobbing when she falls over a chair and cuts her leg to bleeding. The Druids avoid her, and she can hear the whispers that the seer has gone mad and that the rage of an oracle is ill luck for all who hear. Gradually, Morgana comes to a weary acceptance and spends her days reliving only the good things, seeing the same happinesses day after day until she feels like a part of the court, this court that will one day come to be.

Three months after she awakens from her long sleep, in the height of summer when the days are long and she can feel the sun on her skin when she sits by the window in the evening, Morgana comes to a decision. The next morning, she rises and pulls on her old traveling cloak, packs a satchel of food and the ingredients to several spells, and sets out to journey to the island that she has foreseen only a few times. She hasn't followed the story to its end often, preferring to avoid the grief that she now knows will lie on that road, but she has seen it clearly enough to know that she still has a part to play.

Many years hence, Arthur will return to her and when he does, she will cast the spell that binds them all to history. That future is a while away yet, but the spell is difficult and there is much she must learn. Morgana walks away from the Druids in the morning: automatic, unaware, her movements long since predetermined. Her sight ranges out ahead to banners and trumpets and triumphs, lonely islands and dreams to come even beyond the lives of mortal men. Time swirls around her as she travels and Morgana wades in deep, lives a thousand lives not her own while putting one foot in front of the other on the road, leaning on her stick to stay upright, steady as a river rock against the flow of time.


End file.
